A Letter of Mary - Laurie R. King [39]
"Which only leaves several dozen possibilities." I nearly laughed aloud at the expression on his normally sardonic features, which were caught between sheepishness and indignation.
"It is only a working hypothesis, Russell." With dignity, he held the garden gate open for me to pass through.
"It seems perilously close to a guess to me, Holmes."
"Russell!"
"It's all right, Holmes. I won't tell Lestrade the depths to which you stoop. Tell me about the knives."
"There is no 'guess' about those," he said with asperity. "Both were very sharp, and the one carried by the person with a loose nail in his shoe and an excess of hair oil was shaped to the suggestion of violence. The other was a more workmanlike blade, shorter and folding by means of a recently oiled hinge. It was wielded by the man in the round-toed boots and tweed suit."
"The flashy dresser carries a flashy knife. Not the sort one would wish Mrs Hudson to encounter." I lowered my voice, as we were nearing the house.
"No," he agreed dryly. "Mrs Hudson's talents are many and varied, but they do not include dealing with armed toughs."
"We won't hear from Mycroft today, or Lestrade?"
"Tomorrow, I should think. We cannot decide our actions until we have news from them, but I expect that we shall find ourselves moving our base of operations into London for a few days and incidentally giving Mrs Hudson a holiday. Sussex is a bit too distant from Colonel Edwards, Erica Rogers, and various mysterious Arabs."
"Meanwhile, the neighbours."
"And you, the lexicon."
"This case is wreaking havoc with my work," I muttered darkly. Holmes did not look in the least sympathetic, but was, on the contrary, humming some Italian aria as he left the house, walking stick in hand, cap on head, every inch the country squire paying visits on the lesser mortals. I opened my books and got to work.
Truth to tell, although I would not have admitted it to him, I regretted the interruption not at all. I thoroughly enjoyed that afternoon of immersing myself in Mary's letter, and I found it immensely exciting to see the lacunae fall before my pen, to turn the first choppy and tentative phrases into a smooth, lucid translation. This was original work in what appeared to be primary source material, a rarity for an academic, and I revelled in it. When Holmes walked in, I was astonished to find that I had worked nonstop for four hours. It felt like one.
"Russell, haven't your eyes fallen out yet? Shall I tell Mrs Hudson to leave our food in the oven while we have a swim?"
"Holmes, your genius continually astounds me. May I have another ten minutes?" There was no need to ask for the results of his interviews— it was in the look of dogged persistence he wore.
"Take fifteen. I don't mind climbing that cliff in the dark."
"Ten. You get together some towels and the bathing costumes."
Forty minutes later, we lay back in the shallow pool left by the receding tide, and I asked him what our neighbours had said.
"They saw nothing."
"That is very peculiar, in the countryside."
"Due entirely to a piece of bad luck. There was a "do" on at the Academy that evening, to welcome the new director, and the area was crawling with formal black automobiles, brought in from Brighton to ferry guests from the station. Several of them ended up in impassable lanes and farmyards before the night was through. Ours might have had another county's registration code on its number plates, but if so, nobody noticed."
"You should have—" I bit it back.
"Yes?"
"Hindsight. We should have had Old Will or Patrick come and keep watch that night."
"I had thought of that, but decided against it. Having enthusiastic amateurs involved is a terrible responsibility, and usually a liability. Neither of them would have been able to resist a confrontation with the intruders."
"You're probably right. Old Will certainly."
"I even considered, briefly, asking Constable Perkins to come out and sit in the bushes."
"My goodness. Desperate